COLLEGE STATION — Twelve years ago, John Pooler tried becoming the 12th Man on the Texas A&M football team. Slight of frame at 170 pounds, Pooler earned the coaches' attention by running the 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds. Alas, he made every tryout cut but the last.

"Grow a little and come back next year," a coach told him.

"Grow?" a wide-eyed Pooler responded. "I'm 27 years old!"

Fast-forward 12 years, and Pooler is far from the home of the 12th Man — he's in the heart of Afghanistan serving as a Marine Corps captain.

"Love it here; reminds me of South Texas," Pooler wrote via Google chat. "Dirt roads, canals ... it's like being on the Rio Grande.

"This place is a redneck's dream. You eat with your hands and carry a loaded gun."

Life on tour

Pooler, my best friend from childhood back home in Oak Ridge North, is on his second tour, the first of which was to Iraq in 2006. He's been in Afghanistan's Helmand Province since September and intends to come home around the middle of next year.

"Our role is to 'connect the people to the (Afghan) government,' " Pooler wrote of his current mission.

Is it working?

"I hope so," he responded.

He knows this: The Aggies' success under coach Mike Sherman — A&M (9-3) plays LSU (10-2) in the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 7 — has made him even more proud to be an Aggie.

"Aggies 24-20," Pooler predicted. "The Cotton Bowl will be on here about (4 a.m.), and it will be freezing in the TV tent, but I'll be there watching."

He won't be the only one. Pooler and fellow Marines captain and Aggie Lloyd McGuire of Liberty "watched" the A&M-Texas game on Thanksgiving on ESPN.com (they didn't have a TV at the time).

"It was a digital image of the field, and someone would type what would happen," Pooler wrote. "And then you would see the little ball move."

Still, by the end of A&M's 24-17 win over UT, Pooler and McGuire were so stoked they might as well have had seats on the 50-yard line.

"McGuire had gone to the A&M-Missouri game at Kyle Field (an A&M loss), and then he deployed here," Pooler wrote. "He told me, 'The Aggies have won every game since. I'm going to see if I can extend my deployment through the 2011 season.' "

One of Pooler's tour highlights was meeting U.S. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, who visited his base in November. McCain asked Pooler, a former A&M rugby team standout and one-time member of the military's famed Combined Services rugby team, where he had trained for the military.

"I didn't know how to answer because I had trained all over the place," Pooler wrote. "But the one place I actually enjoy talking about is A&M, so that's what I told him. At that time, our football team had just beaten Oklahoma, and Sen. McCain knew exactly how many years it had been since we'd beaten the Sooners. I was impressed."

Celebrating the season

Pooler joined the Marines out of Oak Ridge High and spent five years in the enlisted ranks before attending A&M. Degree in hand, he rejoined the Marines as an officer. He and his subordinates in Afghanistan spent Christmas "laying low," he wrote.

"Honestly, I don't look at these holidays much in celebration," said Pooler, whose most precious gift in the mail was a small paper Christmas tree courtesy of his 4-year-old son. "They're more like milestones."

Any plans for New Year's Eve?

"The district governor here (in Afghanistan) asked me the same thing," Pooler wrote. "I told him if I was back in the U.S., I'd be going out on the town. But here, I was just going to take my M-16 and shoot it in the air."

What?

"It was a joke. We all laughed," Pooler responded. "It was in reference to how people celebrate over here."

I reminded him we used to do the same thing — minus the M-16s but plus a couple shotguns — in our big backyards off Rayford Road.

"Yes, we did!" he wrote. "I'm looking forward to getting back to Texas."

Basketball

For as little as $2.50, fans can buy tickets for the men’s game against McNeese State at 3 p.m. Friday at Reed Arena. Visit oldarmyspirit.com or 12thmanfoundation.com for more information. The No. 18 Aggies (11-1) have won eight consecutive games heading into the New Year’s Eve contest against the Cowboys (8-4) originally scheduled to start four hours later.

Meanwhile, the seventh-ranked women take on host San Diego State today at 9 p.m. in the Surf ’N Slam tournament title game. A&M (10-1) has shot at least 46 percent from the floor in winning its last four games against Purdue, TCU, Rutgers and Drexel by an average of 32 points.

“I want to teach our team to win on the road,” A&M coach Gary Blair said of tonight’s game against SDSU. “This will be our first true road game since we played at Duke.”

The Aggies suffered a 61-58 setback at Duke on Dec. 6, their only loss of the season.

Football

The Aggies (9-3) report for the Cotton Bowl on Saturday in Arlington. Their first practice in preparation for the Jan. 7 meeting with LSU (10-2) will be Sunday at Cowboys Stadium.

The Aggies are aiming for their first 10-win season since 1998 in their first meeting with the Tigers since 1995.